Is ploughing the new polo? As Jane Fryer discovered, it's harder than it looks

Richard Norman and Mark Clifford are crouched in the ­middle of an enormous, muddy field in Hertfordshire having a good bicker. Every few seconds they bob up, poke about with a tape measure, pore over the wormy earth, take a few notes and argue some more.

‘No, no, no!’ says Richard, pointing at a furrow. ‘I know he’s finished parallel with his opening and the crown’s level, and he’s ended close to his starting furrow . . . but it’s way too deep. I’d give him 15 out of 20, maximum.’

Jane Fryer takes part in competitive ploughing, a centuries-old sport that lasts longer than a marathon and boasts tens of thousands of devotees

‘Ah, but look how he’s marked the finish,’ says Mark. ‘Just look at it! That’s a wonderful finish. And a beautiful furrow wall — you don’t see many as straight as that . . .’

‘But its still too deep — some poor b*****’s got to fill it in again later. It’s a 15 and that’s final or we’ll never make lunch.’

Welcome to the world of competitive ploughing, a centuries-old sport that lasts longer than a marathon, boasts tens of thousands of devotees all over the country, and apparently involves a lot of standing round in the cold and quibbling.

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Today, Hertfordshire’s brightest and best are battling it out in a swooping 70-acre field at the 62nd annual ­ploughing match of the Royston & Buntingford Ploughing Association.

It’s quite a turn-out: 78 competitors ­ranging in age from 13 to about 80, six judges, a couple of stewards, a wind-swept burger van, a troop of shivering morris men and a tatty white judges’ hut containing two ­plastic chairs and an astonishing ­display of highly polished silverware.

‘We’ve got 12 cups to give out today,’ Association chairman Jim Sapseed says proudly. ‘Of course, it’s all good fun, but when it comes down to it, ­people are serious and they want to win.’

There’s also every type of plough you could imagine — horse-drawn, home-made, war-time, rickety, state-of-the-art — and ten different classes to accommodate them all (with names like ‘the reversibles’ and ‘the conventionals’) and, perhaps more surprising, a decent clutch of spectators including the mayor of Royston and a couple of rather glamorous-looking women.

Alarmed ploughmen all around shout: 'Keep the wheel in the furrow. Keep the wheel in the FURROW!' as Jane tries a small red tractor

Competitive ploughing is on the up, according to cereal makers Jordans, thanks to what seems to be a ­heightened awareness of the importance of our rural traditions. Veterans are honing their skills; amateurs are ­giving it a whirl.

There’s even a Ploughing Academy in Cornwall run by a chap called Phil Barriball. And ploughing matches — it’s a match, not a competition — are bouncing back and ­booming all over the country.

It has been hailed as ‘the new polo’, though I suspect that might be stretching it a bit. As does Robert Ball, 83, who’s been ploughing since he was seven: ‘Polo?! I’ve never heard such a load of old cobblers!’

Anyway, the sun is out, the morris men are limbering up and the rules — laid down by the ­Society of Ploughmen — seem basic.

Each ploughman is awarded a stubble-covered plot according to the size of his (there aren’t any ‘hers’ today) plough — so Paul Walsh and his huge Shire horses Fred and Mary get a quarter of an acre each, while the big American tractors that plough 13 ­furrows at a time have five acres.

The furrows must be dead straight (no ‘banana ploughing’), beautifully neat, not too deep and not too ­shallow. The straw must be ploughed back into the soil and invisible, the ploughman must finish as close as ­possible to the spot he started.

Oh yes, and they have four hours to get it all right: four hours of inching across the field, hanging out of their tractor cabs or ‘whoa-ing’ their horses, stopping and adjusting their line every other yard and generally being rather serious.

Take Paul Walsh, who is wearing a jaunty hat and eyeing his very neat-looking furrows in despair. Paul adores ploughing matches — despite having 500 acres to look after at home.

‘If you get a nice bit of soil and it’s going smoothly, you just can’t beat it. It’s beautiful, it’s therapeutic — you can smell the earth and see it and touch it. I can’t think of anything better to do of an afternoon, can you?’

Two plots across, Charlie Hughes, 13, is warming up on a large green tractor and a home-made plough that it took him and his dad two years to finish.

‘I just want to beat my older brother Sam. He was the junior champion of Hertfordshire. I want to be the best ploughman in the world, though I do get quite nervous.’

Charlie’s dad David, 51, has been competing for years.

‘When I was Charlie’s age, ploughing matches were out of fashion and no one was interested. But that’s all changed. Look at it — it’s brilliant,’ he says, waving at the buzzing, throbbing field. ‘Everyone’s having a whale of a time.’

And he’s right. It turns out there’s a whole competitive ploughing world out there: clubs, associations, websites, Facebook groups, Twitter threads and a busy fixture list.

Richard and Mark are judging the regionals. Next in the calendar is the County championship. And then finally, next year, the Nationals — held at Taunton, Somerset — where Richard has ­competed several times.

‘Everyone gets nervous at the Nationals. It’s like going to Wembley,’ says Richard.

‘You get crowds of 15,000 to 20,000. But if you really want to see some ploughing, go to Ireland. Their last national ploughing event had 180,000 visitors.’

One of the big names in British ploughing is the ‘brilliant’ national champion John Hills. And then, says Richard: ‘There are also the Chapels and the Wittys – the real Beckhams of the ploughing world.’

There’s a healthy rivalry between the modern (mostly professional farmers) and ­‘vintage’ classes (machines that pre-date 1960).

Spectators Ron Burton, 78, and Ernie Samuel, 78, ploughed their first field in 1939 and have no truck with modern machines. ‘There’s ploughing and there’s ploughing,’ says Ernie.

‘I mean, look at that machine over there. It’s 11 furrows wide. It could do this whole field in a day.’

Ron chips in: ‘It’s dreadful. It looks like the pigs have been rooting about — it’s not level, it’s clumsy, it’s full of clumps and it’s too deep. We took a bit more care in our time.’

They also had to do without air-conditioned cabs, state-of-the-art stereo systems and squishy hydraulic seats.

‘It was freezing. You’d take your lunch, sit under a hedge and make yourself a fire. I had cracked lips, blue hands and corns all across my hands that I had to slice off with a razor.’

Blimey. And all to provide our daily bread — because ploughing is crucial to survival. If you don’t turn over the soil, get rid of the weeds and leftover crops, and create a seed bed, then the new crops won’t grow.

Meanwhile, the judges have finally finished quibbling.

‘It’s a great job,’ says ­Richard. ‘You get a very nice lunch: a ploughman’s, naturally.

And everyone wants to be your friend, so we get through quite a few pints.’

It’s also nice to be out in the fresh air on a crisp, sunny day. But for me, after four hours of watching soil being turned, the novelty’s beginning to wear off.

Until, finally, it’s my turn —first aboard a small red tractor carving near-perfect furrows as alarmed ploughmen all around shout: ‘Keep the wheel in the furrow. Keep the wheel in the FURROW!’

Then I switch to the Shire horses, and hang on for dear life as Fred and Mary storm across the field, churning up soil and worms as the ground furls into a great brown wave and fills my nostrils with the smell of wet earth.

I am finding it a bit more of a challenge. The plough weighs a ton, the handles — worn smooth from thousands of hours of tilling soil – keep slipping out of my hands, the reins are rubbing my palms raw and all I can say to Fred and Mary is ‘whoaah!’

But after a bit of practice and a lot of plodding up and down behind their huge feathery feet, the plough wheel starts to rumble smoothly along the bottom of the furrow. And it’s then that I really get it. It’s a wonderful experience — calm, therapeutic, just as Paul described.

So does he use Fred and Mary on his 500-acre farm?

‘You must be joking!’ he snorts. ‘No one in their right mind would plough with horses now. It would take me a day and an 11-mile walk to plough an acre with these two, or you could do a whole 70-acre field with one of the new machines.

‘I’m just an enthusiast trying to keep the tradition alive.’

And thank goodness. Because it might not sound very glamorous, but there’s something truly wonderful about ploughing a field. Or even a bit of field. And it’s a lot more fun than watching.

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Is ploughing the new polo? As Jane Fryer discovered, it's harder than it looks